If it doesn’t exist, then it’s even more clear that it’s not racist. You’re not arguing against my point here, you’re reinforcing it.
Only in the sense that if you claim to have seen a unicorn, and I say that unicorns don’t exist, then I’m re-enforcing your point.
Er, no. If I said that no unicorns are racist, and you said that unicorns don’t exist, you would be supporting my point.
Thought experiment time. Alan and Bob are twins, and both, in all their dealings with people act in a way that no-one would consider racist. Alan thinks the thought “blacks are subhuman” repeatedly, but at no point, in dealing with black people, or others, does he say that, or act in any other racist way. Bob never thinks that.
What is there that anyone could see that would make Alan racist but not Bob? My contention is that if it’s literally impossible for a thing to be detected, and it has no effect on anything (those are ways of restating the same thing, really), then it doesn’t exist. “Alan’s racism” does not exist, any more than “Bob’s racism”.
You may think that it’s simply philosophical bullshittery, and you’d be right to some extent, but there are repeated claims that, despite someone neither doing or saying anything racist, they can somehow be determined to be racist. MrDibble does this all the fucking time, he’s done it several times in this thread, because he doesn’t understand how words work.
I’m going to add that someone said that it all sounds like Philosophy 101 - the world would be a better place if everyone had to study that, at minimum.
Eh, saying a statement isn’t inherently offensive unless it’s written or spoken is like saying a person isn’t inherently happy until he’s born (or conceived, if you’re so inclined). It’s complete nonsense to speak of the attributes of something that doesn’t exist.
Which is why I’d rather people stopped saying that it is inherently offensive, or that racism is separate from actions in any way.
Must be a Taoist thing. The word that can be spoken is not the eternal word…
That phrase as written is completely neutral, but in reality it is never, ever used as a compliment :).
By Steophan’s logic, the phrase “Black people are all inherently inferior to white people and we should immediately return to widespread slavery” is also not racist, since they’re just words.
At which point, one wonders what precisely is the damn point in making such an incredibly fine and utterly useless distinction.
The point is that people should focus on whether someone’s actions are discriminatory, not waste time on pointless speculation about someone else’s inner, unshared thoughts.
This started because of the OPs habit of calling people racist based on no evidence whatsoever, but on his own guesses about their thoughts and motivations.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, suggesting that people being enslaved is somewhat, minor though it may be, into the treating people differently category.
It’s pretty clear now that the point is people should not waste time on pointless discussion with you about the attributes of non-existent things.
Tell that to the person that started this thread to do precisely that, then.
Can a racist understand philosophy and basic logic enough to mock the teaching of an introductory course in philosophy and logic? Why yes. That doesn’t make his racist examples any less racist.
Is a racist philosophy instructor sub-human?
I guess maybe he’s making a point that words themselves aren’t racist and that it’s people who say the words who are actually racist.
The problem is that this argument ends up making him look worse. We’ve switched from the argument that the statement “black are subhuman” is racist to the argument that Steophan is racist.
Bullshit to you. Great argument!
Absolutely – that’s why I said that the “more likely to” construction “can be a non-racist statement, depending on context.”
To sum up:
“Black people are more likely to…” = sometimes racist, sometimes not
“[All] black people are…” = always racist
So as kaylasdad99 indicated, all of the statements listed by magellan01 are racist.
MrDibble, stop calling all these people racist. They are delicate flowers and are terrified of continuing a conversation in which someone might think they are racist. By expressing your thoughts about their posts, and what you think they might be actually expressing, you are scaring them into pulling into their turtle shells. They just can’t take it – they can’t face the possibility that they might have actually said something racist, or they are so terrified that society might think they’re a racist and do the terrible things that society does to racists [hint – it’s pretty much nothing]. So you can see why they’re so terrified.
MrDibble (as a coloured South African) is a man who’s lived through tougher times than you’ve ever known. His perspective on racism isn’t merely based on “things that internet nerds annoy me with” (Me, speaking as a very nerdy nerd).
I think the problem here is that we are using the generally accepted definition of racism, which can be found in any dictionary or reference work on the subject, which begins with the words “a belief”. Racism is a belief, which means that it is something that takes place in the minds of racists, entirely separate from their actions. Your definition of racism appears to be something different, that requires action. By the generally accepted definition, a belief that blacks are subhuman is racist.